Design ideas??

[Bournbrook]

Hi all.

I had a pre-planning meeting today and they indicated that we ‘should’ get planning on a plot on our back garden as long as we take a few things into consideration. I sent them the attached plan and they said the following:

- the boundary between the 2 properties would need to move north by about a m to give donor property a bigger garden. 
- the footprint would need to be slightly smaller than the equivalent bungalow to the west (in neighbouring garden). 
- they would consider a basement or roof rooms as long as no dormer and as long as height didn’t exceed the height of next door (ridge height of 5.7m). We could excavate downwards. 
- they would limit to 2/3 bed but I’m think oh we could have study too that would double as a guest room. 
 

given all this info does anyone have any thoughts at all on design, positioning, anything?? We will obviously speak to architects and are in the process of doing so, but I’ve witnessed some great ideas on here that sometimes work better than those of architects, so thought it was worth a punt!

[Phil Sacre]

You will need a party wall act agreement to dig deeper than the other bungalow's foundations because you will excavate within 3m of them.

 

Gus has provided a very useful description of a soil investigation on another 'basement' thread.

[Bournbrook]

On 06/05/2023 at 15:04, Phil Sacre said:

You will need a party wall act agreement to dig deeper than the other bungalow's foundations because you will excavate within 3m of them.

 

Gus has provided a very useful description of a soil investigation on another 'basement' thread.

Thank you. Hadn’t realised this so will take a look

[MikeSharp01]

A couple of things come to mind:

 

1. Think through a PV roof as in see if can get a single roof face facing as near south as possible so if the image above has north at the top then try and get the long edge on the south side rather than the North as it is - I can see a tree indicated that might cast some shadow so that may be a deciding factor.
2. It looks like you will need that party wall agreement with or without a basement.
3. To cut the footprint perhaps loose the garage, or a proportion of it, to give you a little more manoeuvring room. 

[Iceverge]

This is one of my favourite houses for inspiration a similarly tight site. The layout would need to be different for your situation. 

 

 

It's a passivhaus too but it'd be economical to build due to the simple shape. 

 

https://www.annethornearchitects.com/#/meetinghouselane/

 

More details at. 

 

https://passivehouse-database.org/index.php?lang=en#d_5319

 

 

 

[Russdl]

Great advice from @MikeSharp01 re the PV.
 

Currently it looks like your longest roof spans will be facing north east and north west, if you can spin that round so they face south east and south west and pop some PV on there you’ll reap the benefits (depending on the shading). 
 

That would I suspect put the garage in jeopardy though. 

[Bournbrook]

On 09/05/2023 at 07:09, MikeSharp01 said:

A couple of things come to mind:

 

1. Think through a PV roof as in see if can get a single roof face facing as near south as possible so if the image above has north at the top then try and get the long edge on the south side rather than the North as it is - I can see a tree indicated that might cast some shadow so that may be a deciding factor.
2. It looks like you will need that party wall agreement with or without a basement.
3. To cut the footprint perhaps loose the garage, or a proportion of it, to give you a little more manoeuvring room. 

Thank you. Would love to get long side facing south but it creates a more tricky space for manoeuvring cars. 
 

Maas definitely thinking about losing garage. We would need some storage area somewhere but this could just be a storage shed somewhere. 
 

I don’t know much about party wall agreements and need to look into this. Is it only if we go deeper than their foundations? How do we know depth of theirs? Would we definitely need to go deeper?  They would 100% be against the build (even though they’ve done it). Can they just refuse??

[Bournbrook]

6 hours ago, Russdl said:

Great advice from @MikeSharp01 re the PV.
 

Currently it looks like your longest roof spans will be facing north east and north west, if you can spin that round so they face south east and south west and pop some PV on there you’ll reap the benefits (depending on the shading). 
 

That would I suspect put the garage in jeopardy though. 

Yes don’t mind garage going. I just feel like it would mean a huge area of the plot being used for parking and manoeuvring (as we’d need to be able to leave drive in forward gear)

[MikeSharp01]

5 minutes ago, Katie AG said:

Yes don’t mind garage going. I just feel like it would mean a huge area of the plot being used for parking and manoeuvring (as we’d need to be able to leave drive in forward gear)

I guess if you think about the short/medium term this is true. In the longer term will you own a car? Won't self driving cars be much more thing - which turn up as and when you need them.

[Bournbrook]

39 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

I guess if you think about the short/medium term this is true. In the longer term will you own a car? Won't self driving cars be much more thing - which turn up as and when you need them.

Well it’s more about planning requirements!! Needs 2 parking spaces and to be able to leave in forward gear according to highways. 
 

[MikeSharp01]

2 minutes ago, Katie AG said:

forward gear according to highways. 

You could reverse in then?

[Bournbrook]

My understanding is it has to be enter and leave in forward gear

[MikeSharp01]

19 minutes ago, Katie AG said:

My understanding is it has to be enter and leave in forward gear

Turntable perhaps - maybe we are now a little far out of the box!

[Bournbrook]

4 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Turntable perhaps - maybe we are now a little far out of the box!

Funnily enough I’d just been googling them. Might not be a bad shout given the potential gains on such a small plot….

[ETC]

The plot is big enough for a decent sized house plus garage and still leave space over for a garden.

[ETC]

In progress.

[Bournbrook]

7 hours ago, ETC said:

In progress.

Looks great. We had been considering going up the side of the plot to give some SE facing windows. Our only concerns with that were that our neighbours in the adjacent bungalow might kick up more of a fuss so perhaps at least that part would need to be a flat roof. 
the planners have indicated they’d like smaller footprint than next door (which I believe this is?), but would be happy for us to have roof rooms without dormers. Ridge height could not exceed Nextdoor though (5.7m) but we could excavate down. 
Im also not sure this leaves room for turning a car to leave in a forward gear? Turntable may be option though!!

 

[ETC]

Leave it with me. You’ll need to be able to drive into/onto your site and turn - not a problem - there’s plenty of space to do this.

 

Do you have a list of rooms you’d like?
 

I’m not a fan of a basement if it can be avoided - purely on cost and I’m not sure if there is a need to go upstairs but let’s see what happens as the design develops.

[Bournbrook]

1 hour ago, ETC said:

Leave it with me. You’ll need to be able to drive into/onto your site and turn - not a problem - there’s plenty of space to do this.

 

Do you have a list of rooms you’d like?
 

I’m not a fan of a basement if it can be avoided - purely on cost and I’m not sure if there is a need to go upstairs but let’s see what happens as the design develops.

I think a basement would be too expensive for us to be honest. 
the planners have indicated a 2 bedroom property would be preferable, however we would like to push this to 3 (plus a small box room for guests/study). Our neighbours property was described as a 2 bed yet has a large study, separate dining room, etc so hoping we can frame some of the rooms as study and playroom??

we would like a large kitchen/diner/living area and then 3 decent sized bedrooms (not huge but enough to fit a double bed when kids become adults). One bedroom with en suite and a family bathroom. We would also really like a utility room, even if v small. We aren’t too fussed about a garage, but would need some kind of storage area. One of the big things for us would be lots of light and a good connection to the garden. 

[Kelvin]

Yes, avoid basements. As nice as they can be they are dear to do.
 

We’ve built ours as a 2 bed but could easily be configured as 3, 4, or even 5 although we only have two bathrooms so 5 might be pushing it. We placed the downstairs study at the same end of the house as the guest room with the largish bathroom separating both rooms. 

Edited May 13, 2023 by Kelvin

[ETC]

1 minute ago, Kelvin said:

We’ve built ours as a 2 bed but could easily be configured as 3, 4, or even 5 although we only have two bathrooms so 5 might be pushing it. We placed the downstairs study at the same end of the house as the guest room with the largish bathroom separating both rooms. 

Feel free to post some pictures/plans.

[Dave Jones]

this was built near to us, lot of floor area and similar approach lane

 

[ProDave]

38 minutes ago, Katie AG said:

I think a basement would be too expensive for us to be honest. 
the planners have indicated a 2 bedroom property would be preferable, however we would like to push this to 3 (plus a small box room for guests/study). Our neighbours property was described as a 2 bed yet has a large study, separate dining room, etc so hoping we can frame some of the rooms as study and playroom??

we would like a large kitchen/diner/living area and then 3 decent sized bedrooms (not huge but enough to fit a double bed when kids become adults). One bedroom with en suite and a family bathroom. We would also really like a utility room, even if v small. We aren’t too fussed about a garage, but would need some kind of storage area. One of the big things for us would be lots of light and a good connection to the garden. 

It is usually number of "bedrooms" that dictate the number of parking spaces needed.  Large study in addition to the two bedrooms seems a way to avoid an extra parking space required.

 

If you are not keen on an upstairs, but want lots of storage, consider making the loft as an open volume either with a ridge beam or at least attic trusses, and encompass it within the insulated area preferably with a warm roof construction.  Then you will have a large storage space that also leaves the option to develop the upstairs into habitable rooms later of if you want to.  Even think where you could incorporate a staircase to do that in the future, but leave it as a good quality loft ladder to start with.  A couple of roof windows would make it more of a useful space.

[Bournbrook]

20 minutes ago, Dave Jones said:

this was built near to us, lot of floor area and similar approach lane

 

Yes a mirror of that would work well on our plot. Do you happen to have link to the planning application for this so I can find floor plans and dimensions?

[saveasteading]

Lots of good advice. 

From my own expertise I emphasise 2 points.

Basement is commercially unsound, unless land is extremely expensive. Especially so close to other properties.

 

Good parking is essential, and arriving and leaving in forward gear is mandatory. People do not like to park away from the house, so 2 spaces plus genuine turning space is essential commercially as well as for planning.